


Wind Stress

by standalone



Series: Fucking Political Bullshit exR Coffeeshop AU [15]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: I Don't Even Know, M/M, call your goddamn senators, moving forward, toward justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22432135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: “There is little doubt about the outcome.” —The New York Times, 1/22/2020
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Series: Fucking Political Bullshit exR Coffeeshop AU [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/610273
Comments: 14
Kudos: 62





	Wind Stress

“How you holding up?” Grantaire asks. “That last speech tonight was a full-on firestorm.”

“You can really tell which of them used to be lawyers, huh?”

“Just, yeah. Who thinks like that? Point A, Point B, Point C which brings us back to A which brings us to, wait for it, a moral imperative on the mic-drop.”

Grantaire’s retelling reminds Enjolras how heated he felt—keeps feeling, listening to the constant coverage. He keeps forgetting too. 

“We’re gonna lose, babe.”

“Get a new line, Enj. You’ve been saying that the whole damn time.”

“I keep forgetting in the heat of it. Keep losing sight.”

*

This is why he’s not a senator himself. It’s also, maybe, what makes him a pretty decent staffer. Because politicians need to be pragmatic, but they also need to be surrounded by people who still believe change is possible. Because without that, well, we’ve all seen what happens. Without at least a little second-hand hope, a politician becomes a Problem.

The senator has to play the long game. This is good, and she’s good at it.

Everyone else gets to take some turns being unreasonably optimistic.

All the togetherness helps. Temporary community is its own kind of excitement. It’s a little like sleepaway camp.

There are mornings huddled together in the office; Chida tries to get the key players in before Lamarque, but it’s hard.

“You need to sleep,” Chida said this morning when the senator strode into the office at 7.

“I’m running on angry-old-lady energy,” the senator said, hanging her coat in the closet. “I figure righteous rage can fuel me through at least a couple sleepy weeks.”

“You go first,” Chida told Enjolras, so he fixed two cups of coffee and followed the senator into her private office to plan the day’s communications while Chida finished collating her staffers’ notes about the last 24 hours of constituent reactions.

There aren’t enough, he knows. Chida’s a little apologetic when she delivers the numbers. Not that it matters. Not that it matters. But god, it feels good every time someone on the other end of the line cares. 

Mid-morning today, while Lamarque was out meeting with some of her colleagues, Enjolras hopped on one of the inbound lines for a few hours. “Tell the senator to do whatever she can to make this thing rigorous and fair,” one caller said. “Tell her to keep fighting for our country’s democracy.”

“I’ll do that,” he said, logging the call.

*

They inadvertently left the video-chat open. When Enjolras settled back into his desk at the hotel with a take-out box of tacos waiting to be his late-night dinner, his screen woke up and there was Grantaire, one hand gesturing indignantly into the air while the other held his phone.

“Listen,” R was saying, “your man wants in on this cover-up, I’ll be doing everything I can to unseat him come elections. I have money, I have time, and I have a whole _hell_ of a lot of pettiness.”

Enjolras watched, grinning. 

“You know as well as anyone the prosecutors are right, what we’re seeing here, this is a ‘high crime in progress.’ It’s still going. We’re all gonna remember. What’s _your_ dude doing to save this country from dictatorship?”

Grantaire glanced at his screen, then did a double-take when he realized he was being watched.

“Tell him to do better,” he said, looking back at Enjolras. “That’s it. Do better.” He hung up. “Babe.”

“That sounded impassioned.”

“Fuck off.” 

“I liked it.”

“Oh, I fucking know.” Grantaire’s eyes—underslept, heavy-lidded—still make Enjolras’s stomach clench and his fingers twitch. Were he here, Enjolras would grab him. 

“How was your day?” he asked instead.

“Kinda shitty.” He laughed, pushing his hands back into his hair, which keeps flopping down into his eyes. “The kind of day that makes you want to leave voicemail rants for senators who aren’t even yours.”

“Yep.”

“How you holding up? That last speech tonight was a full-on firestorm.”

***

Senator Lamarque’s entry into the office the next morning happens to coincide with several staffers’ debate over the ethics of when and how a candidate should reject someone’s endorsement. 

At the check-in, Darren asks where she stands.

“Hoo boy,” Lamarque says, “I have neither the time nor the energy for this.” She closes her eyes. Everyone waits—when someone’s getting wronged, time and energy are irrelevant for Lamarque. She opens her eyes to sort through a pile of folders on her desk till she finds the one she wants. Folder in hands, she pauses and looks up at her waiting audience.

“But you know, if it was me, here’s what I’d say. 

“I’d say, ‘I’m always grateful to earn someone’s vote. But if you’re endorsing me, you need to know this campaign is rooted in humanity, and especially the humanity of the people who are most vulnerable in our country today. If you are endorsing me, you are endorsing the civil rights of trans people and Black people and indigenous people and people who are immigrants and all the people who get told over and over to suck it up and settle for the least bad option. You are condemning ridicule. You are condemning hatred.’” Shaking her head a little, she smiles wryly. “And if they’re cool with that, that’s when I’d say ‘Welcome.’”

Chida, who has been waiting to hand over some letters for the senator’s review and signature, nods.

“That doesn’t undo their past,” Darren objects. 

“Nothing undoes the past,” says Lamarque. “We’ll always carry it with us. But we don’t need to keep wearing it. Sometimes we can offer folks a way to escape.” Enjolras imagines she’s looking beyond them, to the words on her wall: TOWARD JUSTICE. This moral arc keeps on arcing. 

“If we can’t believe in rehabilitation,” Enjolras says slowly, “then there’s no reason to believe we have a chance.”

“How does the saying go?” Lamarque asks. “ _Some of my best friends are bigots_?” She reaches to take Chida’s letters. “It’s true. Bigots in recovery. Like alcoholism. It’s always there, it stays in you, but with the right support, most people can make themselves do better if they want it bad enough. —Now, Carole Chida, what is this you are asking me to sign?”

*

The call volume picks up in the afternoon, after a couple tweets of Eponine’s gain some traction:

 **ETfromDC:** Epicenter of the shitshow, and no goddamn voice in it

 **ETfromDC:** Jesus Christ, just call your fucking senators. We should all be so goddamn lucky 

*

 **Grantaire:** Congrats on going viral, Ep

 **Grantaire:** Aiden in Lamarque’s state office says the phones are hopping

 **Eponine:** Good

 **Eponine:** The rest of y’all better be calling your senators

 **Eponine:** Seriously you fucks, I will curse your unborn children

 **Chetta:** Ppl are trying. Sometimes you gotta push real hard to get the lid to even budge

 **Eponine:** And then one little twist opens it all up

 **Chetta:** You’re right

 **Chetta:** Okay, just posted:

In the attached photo of the Musain’s front window, framed by all the fliers about protests and lost cats and fundraisers, a giant piece of butcher paper reads _Call both your senators, get your first beer for $2_

 **Combeferre:** Brilliant

 **Combeferre:** I’ll come by with Courfeyrac after my meeting

 **Courfeyrac:** Oh no, you’ll meet Courfeyrac at the Musain because he is getting all the beautiful people he knows and heading over for $2 drinks right this minute

 **Courfeyrac:** How many senators do I get to call

 **Chetta:** Fuck

 **Chetta:** R, hate to ask but a second bartender just called in with flu

 **Grantaire:** I’m literally sitting in your bar right now

 **Grantaire:** You can see me

 **Chetta:** On the phone, tho

 **Grantaire:** Just leaving some messages for my senators

 **Grantaire:** I can scrub in at a moment’s notice

 **Chetta:** Consider yourself notified

Enjolras reads this exchange an hour later, from a different bar, far away in DC. Beside him, Kristen’s checking off items on her digital planner, and Darren’s texting with his girlfriend, so he doesn’t feel bad about taking a few minutes for himself.

 **Enjolras:** Nice of you to help out at the Musain

 **Grantaire:** Hey! Been a while, but I can still hold down a bar

 **Enjolras:** Busy there?

 **Grantaire:** Kinda, but Chetta's so damn good. I just set up a couple rounds of mixed drinks, so I have a second

 **Enjolras:** I’m out with Kristen and Darren

 **Grantaire:** What you drinking?

 **Enjolras:** What do you recommend?

 **Grantaire:** Hard liquor

 **Enjolras:** If I was there, you’d say...

 **Grantaire:** My whiskey sours are off the hook tonight

 **Enjolras:** I’ll take one

 **Grantaire:** Yeah you will

Enjolras imagines him on the other side of the Musain bar, hands planted loosely on the scarred wooden surface. He’s leaning in, eyes on Enjolras only enough for Enjolras to wish they were on him more, and to squirm a little at knowing himself to be so watched. 

He would watch back, wanting to wrap his hands in Grantaire’s serviceable button-down, but wanting even more the false distance of just a bar between them, not hundreds of miles of turbulent land.

 **Enjolras:** Love you

 **Grantaire:** Back at you. Gotta go take some orders

Enjolras pockets his phone. Kristen’s tapping him on the arm—silent in favor of some kind of electronic music, the screens above the bar are playing a clip from an impromptu interview with the senator.

 _“We cannot overstate it Matthew,”_ say the closed captions. _“The American Experiment like any sound experiment was founded upon reason and if we are to preserve this experiment in democracy we must act rationally.”_

“Nice and inoffensive,” Kristen says approvingly.

Enjolras rolls his eyes in agreement. After days spent hammering out state and national messaging with Lamarque, she came back from this morning’s coffee meeting with some new directives. “Urgent, but calm,” he tells Kristen. “They need her to hold that tone. The voice you use when you don’t want someone to get shot.”

“Who’s getting shot in this scenario?” she asks.

Onscreen, Lamarque says, _“We owe the American people the most rigorous fair trial possible. My constituents are asking for it. I imagine every senator’s are. Let us bring the truth to light.”_

“You’re getting shots?” asks Darren, leaning over. “Jaya’s on her way. Who wants tequila?”

 _“Thank you Senator Lamarque for taking the time to speak with us after what have been some very long days,”_ says the interviewer. _“More impeachment coverage will follow in just a moment.”_

“Me,” Enjolras says. “And a whiskey sour back.”


End file.
